


we should be (just be)

by billspilledquill



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Henry Laurens’ A+ Parenting, M/M, OOC but hey it’s a moulin rouge AU so what did you expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: John Laurens had met someone special at the Moulin Rouge.Or, he realized that everything is made out of dust, even those who despise them.





	we should be (just be)

 

 _Love_ , he once pressed on letters in ink with that five-cent type machine in a moment of romantic fervor, _love is the most beautiful thing in the world—_

He paused, fingers feeling the cold squares in front of him — _a b c d e f g h_ — his finger hovering over _i_ — closed his eyes, knowing what sentence came next —

 _I have met someone who embraces my obsession with romance_ , he typed with difficulty, the machine was quite old and cranky. He needed to fix it someday. _He is beautiful, but the exceptional thing about him is his disillusioned yet extraordinary gift for hope, his—_

The writer paused, Lafayette was calling him. The sky was quite dark. There were shouts outside, probably a fight. It was never a wise decision to drag over the night street of Paris, Laurens chuckled, knowing that it would be something he would be down to do.

“Johnny? Is everything okay?” Lafayette’s voice echoed from the door. “No crying hopelessly over your writings like the hero in that play— how is it called? The one we went to see at the theatre with Herc last week...”

“ _Armand Duval._ ” He said, “ _Dame Aux Camélias. Franchement Glibert, ta mémoire est de la merde._ ”

“The fact that you know who I am referencing to your situation worries me,” was his only answer.

He sighed and resigned, “I will meet you upstairs.” After hearing the sound of the steps faint, he returned to the abandoned sentence for his possible memoir. Or novel. This thing will be what the world decide it will be. He wanted his legacy to be about him — because he represented all his aspirations and imaginations about love — and called it obsession or a poor bastard ramblings— he still believed it, even after all the things that happened during this summer.

Everyone turned all right at the end. Just like the old verses of Romantic poets, _we turned into transcendent beings, dusts and snow and impending doom and such and such_ — that was the thing about odd passion, nobody wanted to embrace it when il came to kill you. Transcendence meant nothing for most people. Curse them, love them, take your still beating heart out of your chest, look at it with wonder, but they won’t help you from falling down to the idea of eternal time in a body capable of love.

He returned to his writing after a breath (or two) and continued as the sky turned red and brown then black, _his name is Alexander, but the Moulin Rouge called him The Goddamn Nuisance, since he is so stupidly annoying at everyone, including at the producer of the house._

_Quite loud. Quite stupid, even if he denies it._

_I believe that was his charm,_ he wrote not without some fondness. _He was the most popular courtesan in Moulin Rouge. Obnoxious, yes, but beautiful. Bothersome, yet knowledgeable and charming. He skids through the room like he belongs. I think he does._

 _These mixed up contradictions were what that eventually got him killed._ He paused, suddenly remembering. _But that is the thing about him —_

“Monsieur Armand,” Came Lafayette’s voice in a high pitched voice, “you have made your darling wait for exactly eight minutes!”

“Shut your dramatic ass, Marguerite! I’m coming!”

*

 _Rewind_.

_A flower girl was singing in the rain about Spain today, Laurens wrote, I brought her a marguerite._

*

Usually, being his romantic self, Laurens did happen to believe that an event would change the course of his life and all— he just didn’t think it would come that quickly.

The event with his father happened in that summer of 1901, where La Belle Époque shone in all its glory and waste, where poems about love fluttered in the wind since it was appropriate, about beauty since it was all they had. Decay and cynicism, on the other hand, wasn’t much popular, even if it lived on every scrappy place Paris had ever known. _Beautiful_ , you would say, _indeed_ , they will respond.

His hand smothered the soft tips of his poetry collection, the leather cover smelled like dried leaves and ink. He can know the words by heart, could search letters in letters forever, he knew that hope came back the most.

“Now, son,” his father said, brows furrowed, “we both know you are going to regret it.”

He shrugged, “Then what do you want me to do?”

“Be a defender of justice or a lover who recites their verses on the streets of Paris,” he repeated, “we both know you are going to regret it.”

“Probably,” he said, and packed his things and went to die in Paris.

Being a lover was a thing of regret, he knew. A rich boy’s privilege. Nothing engendered more beauty than verses. He had always loved to love love.

*

He planned to sleep through his way to Paris, but a man waked him up, asking with a loud and charming voice, “Do you know how to write?”

“Uh,” he said, looking out the window. Opened. Apparently his morning greetings were now being held with odd strangers who climb into your train (or they were being passengers, who knows really at this point.)

“I write some poems, but —“ _they are mostly political verses, mostly about how I wish to fight every officals and start a social revolution. Is this okay?_

“Okay,” the man immediately wrapped his arms around his shoulder, “do you want to write for us?”

Another man show up, crossing his arms, “Laf, do you think he’s...?”

“Of course!” He exclaimed, “Écoute, just look at his face! His face is literally telling us ‘I’m a hopeless romantic and need to expand my sexual conductibility in Paris’!”

“What,” Laurens said, looking around the train. Its rails were making noises, “what do you want?”

“I’m Gilbert and he’s Hercules,” he said, “we are searching for a playwright for our show, _Spectacular Spectacular_.”

“And does it concerns me?”

They looked at each other, like cats who caught their prey.

“Oh oui,” Gilbert said, his mouth curling upward, “monsieur.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old ficlet of mine so who knows what this is


End file.
